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From Browsing blogs to the Greek Riots of 2008

When I have nothing else to do and no appetite to do something really productive (like reading a book or knitting) I browse blogs. Important to get me to to a blog is not the tag or category, but the title or the picture. I do have a couple of tags that I use, but I never really have a clear idea of what I am looking for: Catchy interesting headlines, that speak to my own mental preferences, but are totally dependent upon my moods.

A while ago, I stumbled upon a post that was ingenious…letting other bloggers or followers per say, start a poem(with some ground rules) just to see where it would lead. Sort of an adventure thru the minds and thoughts of as many people as will end up participating…a sure way to return to that particular blog and post to see how the “story” developed.

This idea of many people cooperating in a tale is not exactly novel to me. I first encountered it in a children’s book, called FLIPPED by an author I no longer remember, same events told from the perspectives by two kids and later in Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom.
In between those two unrelated events, my best friend and I developed a story line from a real event in our lives and spun it into a message to message story, that was outrageously funny to us. Joint imaginative narrative between people who know each other well and especially when they share the same wave length, can be not just sound but also make a plausible account that can be shared with others.

The event that lead to the sms story were rather tragic, a young boy who happened to be of the same age as two of our own boys, was shot in cold blood by a police officer in Athens, Greece. The circumstances surrounding the shooting involved nothing more than a 15 year old out with his friends in a neighborhood that is well known for its not just alleged anarchist connections. As we do not live in the U.S., police officers are not allowed to fire their weapons at will. The shoot first – ask questions later tactic(meanwhile setting up the dead victim with the blame) is a NO GO in Europe!

So the two of us with boys who also did not always heed their parents advice of staying away from certain places, people or what have you, were trembling inside with an indignity, cause we could imagine what it would feel like for the anguished mother!!! Adding insult to injury, the patrolman who shot the boy hired one of the most notorious “dirty” lawyers Greece has ever produced. Every night that creep was slinging mud at the dead boys’ memory on T.V.: with every filthy trick to make this boy – who came from a good solid privileged background and private schooling, without a blemish on his character – into some kind of super degenerate. His talk fanned the fire that had already ignited in the Greek people and youth (You can check out a wikipedia summary here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Greek_riots – or type in 2008 Greek riots for images) I am sure many of you will remember the nightly summaries on T.V. about the riots this senseless cowardly shooting sparked!!! Downtown Athens was literally on FIRE for days. It was a terrible time!

A time where new words were inspired, a time when what was formerly known as Europe’s tallest xmas tree – pride and joy of the mayor of Athens- was burned to the ground twice!! And then received a different superlative: round-about 24 hrs riot police protection but it was no longer known as the tallest in Europe!!!
These tragically funny things got my friend and me into a writing hysteria, based on the facts and mostly indulging in very unchristian thoughts about aforementioned lawyer whom we had made into the leading character(during one of the riots, his offices were actually stormed by “unknown” and burned). Our messages saw us through the extreme shock to our motherly instincts and took us away from the picture that it could easily have been one of our own boys.
So while I was reading this innovative poem, all this came back to me. Back then I had saved that back and forth banter on my computer, we always thought we would rewrite it into a short story. Back then we thought we’d always be so close. Back then my life was very different. Everyone’s was I suppose…today all Greeks face hard times(with the exception of the well known 1% of every nation).
Meanwhile in 2011, the computer got “stolen” under other mysterious circumstances…with so many pictures and all those text messages!
And I live in a different country with my MOIRA(Greek: one of the three Fates) all changed.
(picture not my own)